thanks, i'll try to take some close ups tonight. i have found pics on the web, some seem very clear....but when i look at my plants i don't know...i just cant see it... in the past i've identified males either bec they were taller than the females or because they had spread pollen all over the grow space... sigh

Well, its been an up and down kind of week. My replacement SolarStorm arrived early this week and was eager to get hub to help me set it up. We also need to move to the fruiting stage so the timing was convenient. Set up the new fruiting tent, install the new SS, move the plants, return the defective SS.

But life interfered with plans in some big ways. So, we only started setting up the Secret Jardin DR 120, and it seems the aluminum frame isn't fitting together well. The skeleton is fine, but the cross members at the ceiling are a tad too short and as a result dont stay put...they tend to pop off. The doc sucks so i checked out a bunch of youtubes. Half don't even show the installation of the ceiling cross members, and the others make it look like its supposed to just snap in place.

Well the last thing i want to do is hang a $2000 light over my expensive plants and have it come crashing down, killing the light and the plants in one fell swoop. sooooooooooo, will have to improvise some wire thingie to hold them in place. So plants weren't moved tonight.

And i suppose this is a good problem but my plants have gotten so tall i'm afraid they won't fit in the tent...or even in the room by the time they finish. if i guestimate by doubling the current height of the plants, it will be close. we should have moved to fruiting two weeks ago, but rl has been soo busy. So what to do now? we could lop a foot or so off the tops of the plants before we set them to flower. i wonder how that would work out though, such a drastic cut back right before fruiting. hmmm... will have to think on this... or start making a hole in the roof.

If you do top them, you may want to give them a week more in veg, to recover, before flowering. Most people top earlier but you should be ok since you're still in veg. I know people that have topped in flower but that's more of an emergency procedure.

Disclaimer:I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.

been a while since I posted. My first crop is now far enough into fruiting that i am able to determine sex. killed two males today, all blueberry. I also killed a blueberry that just never really thrived. From the very first it was struggling and fragile. Never grew much. I kept hoping it would take off in time, but it never did. So i killed it. Didnt even go as far as determining sex. It's just so frail i can't imagine it would produce any decent potency, so why bother to waste more nutes on it. i started out with 5 blueberry seeds. Killed 2 maies and one indeterminate, so statistically speaking, the remaining two should be female.

there are still some afghans where the sex isnt clear yet, so i'll keep an eye out.

I had hoped to do the fruiting under the solar storm, but bad planning on my part made that impossible this time around. I hope to fruit under solar storm in the new crop though. The new crop has a couple of cheese, some feminized kosher kush and some bubble kush. They are vegging under the Solar Storm now and doing fantastically well.

I can't provide any input yet on the SS performance in fruiting, but it kicks ass in veg! It really encourages a depth of growth up and down the stem, making for fuller, more bushy plants that are both vibrant and robust. Not sure i'll ever veg under anything else. compared to the hindus i vegged under the metal halide, the afghans and blues under SS are fuller, leafier (is that a real workd?) and healthy and strong.

i've got more picks but its 4am and i dont want to wake the fam with my bumping around and searching in the dark. so i'll post the piks when i wake up.

One interesting side note. I'm not a botanist and don't pretend to understand all this fancy light science. But i put 6 "Confederate Jasmine (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041F ... 00_s00_i00) under the Solar Storm. Three died and the remain three were well on their way there. So i pulled them out of the SS and put them under the HSD and the three remaining ones are doing much better. So it seems some plants really thrive under the SS spectrum while others do not. Which is fine with me. I don't care if it doesnt do miracles with every plant strain on earth. What it does well, it does very, very well. Just need to be watchful for plants that don't seem to like all that blue spectrum light.

Oh, and one last thing for tonight. We are running our lights at night too keep the room cooler and to save on electricity (prices cheaper in the off peak hours). The SS runs a bit hot inside the 4x4 tent if run during hottest part of the day. But by running the lights at night, the heat problem seem sot have dissipated. I should mention tht as of now the only ventilation we are running in the SS tent is are the SS built in fans. We're going to install an inline fan and ducting to move more air in there before we hit our summer desert temps. But these are all minor tweaks. Bottom line is, at least as far as veg goes, the Solar Storm is fantastic!

Disclaimer:I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.

been a while since i posted. i was having a problem last week with my SS not turning on properly. Only half of it would light up. then it seemed to resolve itself. then it came back again. i talked to George at CLW, and he was very helpful and supportive, and is prepared to send me a new SS if one is needed. But i switched out my timer for a different one, and that may have solved the problem. i'm cautiously optimistic, but we'll see. I must say CLW customer service is fantastic!

so, i've got a few pics. the first is the latest grow in my SS tent.

ss tent 1.JPG (66.52 KiB) Viewed 380 times

my kosher kush momma is suffering from overwatering. obviously, i'm going to stop watering for a while, but do you think she can be saved?

overwater.JPG (52.82 KiB) Viewed 380 times

and finally, my cheese momma seems to have a nute deficiency. i'm thinking iron or manganese. any thoughts?

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